There has been for many years a demand for safe and effective methods by which people who wish to appear more physically attractive by gaining lean body mass can increase their bodyweight. Likewise, there is a need for a safe and effective prophylaxis and treatment of pathological weight loss which often accompanies disease or illness and which presents a genuine danger to health.
Though many methods of increasing weight exist which involve bodybuilding regimens (such as repetitive lifting of weights), they are of limited value when the individual is either insufficiently motivated or physically unable due to debilitating illness to adhere to such an exercise regimen. Through carefully controlled diets it is possible to effect healthy weight gain, however many people find it difficult to adhere to such regimens, and those suffering from cachexia (abnormal weight loss) may be unable to ingest such diets easily. Therefore there exists a need for a safe, effective and convenient method for increasing bodyweight.
Glutathione is a tripeptide best known for its antioxidant properties. For the avoidance of doubt the substance referred to herein above as glutathione is the compound: EQU -L-glutamyl-cysteinylglycine (oxidized or reduced form)
and having the chemical formula: ##STR1## (in the case of the reduced form).
Glutathione is relatively inexpensive and is readily available. It commonly exists as a water-soluble whitish powder which can be encapsulated, tableted, or dissolved in liquid to make an oral or aerosol dosage form. The physical and chemical characteristics of glutathione have been described in the Merck Index, 11th Ed., page 703.
Its uses as a food preservative, in cosmetics, as an antidote to the poisoning effect of heavy metals, in cancer chemotherapy, as an antiviral and anti-inflammatory, to treat hepatic disorders and necrosis, to treat pulmonary dysfunction and sickle cell disease, to prevent and treat restenosis following angioplasty, to lower plasma lipoprotein levels, and to treat ischemic heart disease have been previously disclosed. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,146,165, 4,229,468, 4,689,347, 4,758,551, 4,762,705, 4,871,528, and 4,927,850, 5,108,754, 5,204,114, 5,272,166, 5,238,683, 5,326,757.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,466,978 describes the use of glutathione to reduce bodyweight, but gives no examples of this. The authors have found that, unexpectedly, treatment with glutathione produced the opposite effect, namely causing an increase in bodyweight.
The use of glutathione as one component of a multicomponent nutritional formulation to treat patients suffering from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (henceforth referred to as AIDS) and AIDS-related complex is disclosed in WO #92/21368. In one example from WO #92/21368 two out of three patients treated with the multicomponent nutritional formulation showed increased bodyweight after treatment. The authors have discovered that the use of glutathione alone can effect an increase in bodyweight, without the need for the additional components of the composition described in WO #92/21368.